


The Second Hand Unwinds (Time After Time)

by steampunkmagic



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 11:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3485864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steampunkmagic/pseuds/steampunkmagic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry is cursed to repeatedly meet and lose the love of his very long life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Hand Unwinds (Time After Time)

**Author's Note:**

> This just randomly popped into my head so I wrote it down...

**The Second Hand Unwinds**

**(Time After Time)**

 

 

                He might have thought his condition is some kind of medical anomaly, a wild trick of biology, which keeps him locked in time.  A universal constant is a world of evolutionary innovation, and perhaps with time he might have found the key to this condition.

 

                But Henry knows he is cursed and he knows it because of her.                                 

 

 

                She is sitting on a bench the first time he ever lays eyes on Jo Martinez.  Bent over a note book, ink balanced precariously beside her, she is writing furiously.  Her dress is simple and faded, and her bronze locks are tied on top her head with a strip of cloth rather than pins.

 

                Something about the sight of her makes him pause.  "You must be quite cross with whoever is on the receiving end of that letter."  Henry remarks, smiling when she glances up in surprise.

 

                "Indeed."  She replies in accented English.

 

                They speak for many hours, walls of class falling aside with each sentence.  He learns Miss Martinez has come to London with her father from Spanish-America.  Her father is a writer publishing in Britain intent on protesting the Spanish tyranny of the native Mexican peoples.  Now Jo wishes to start writing as well.  In turn, Henry tells her of medical school and his dreams of holding his own practice one day. 

 

 

                Every Wednesday from then on he meets her at the bench by the park.  Henry does not know how long it takes him to realize - a minute? A day? A month? - that he is in love with Jo.  Brilliant, idealistic, and full of biting wit, she reshapes his world with a single kiss. 

 

 

                The world gets reshaped again, when a man who hates idealistic words sets fire to a house where a girl and her father are sleeping inside. 

 

 

                Henry leaves the silver band he bought for her on their bench and he leaves England for a new life in America.

 

 

 

                The first time he dies he is almost glad, at least now he can see her again.  Except it does not work out that way, Henry does not open his eyes to find Jo smiling at him once again, dressed in glowing white.  Instead he finds himself naked on a beach chocking up a lungful of seawater.

 

 

 

 

 

                Time passes and a lot of things change, except him.  Never him.   Virginia threatens succession and Lincoln vies for abolition.  Henry gathers supplies, answers the questions of Clara Barton, and prepares for the storm to break.

 

                For him it breaks long before the first canon fire.

 

                "Jo?"  Henry gasps as what surely must be a ghost crosses past him on the street.

 

                The woman turns to him fully and he knows he has finally gone mad.  No man should live forever, immortality is not for the human mind, and his has reached its end point.  Because she is the same in every detail.

 

                "Do I know you?"  Her voice is like his memory turned reality again.

 

                Henry has to fight to keep his own voice under control.  He does not want to scare her, even though every instinct in his body is screaming to hug her, kiss her, and confirm she is real, solid, and alive.

 

                "Pardon me, Miss, I thought you looked like someone else."

 

                She raises a skeptical eyebrow.  "Some other girl who also goes by Jo?"

 

                "Indeed."

 

                He thinks it is a miracle.  He thinks perhaps this is the reason for his condition: to find her. 

 

 

                There is no time wasting this time around.  Jo thinks he is a bumbling fool but Henry shows up with flowers the next day.  And before long he is on one knee slipping a gold band on her finger.

 

 

 

                "I am coming with you, Henry!"  Jo declares, slamming her hands down on their kitchen table.

 

                "Darling, you are not a nurse."  He has been trying to avoid this argument for weeks as war takes hold of the country.

 

                His wife is having none of it.  "You can teach me.  Because there is no way in hell you are going into a battle without me."

 

                Henry never does win an argument against her. 

 

 

                Together they run from fallen body to fallen body, stitching, bandaging, and mattering curses.  Soaked in blood day after day, exhausted by death.  It is overwhelming to him, even as a doctor, and he marvels at how her hands hardly ever quake in the face of it all. 

 

                Jo is helping him tie off a tourniquet on a boy's leg - that is now nothing more than bloody shreds and nerve endings.  It will have to be amputated later.  A movement over her left shoulder catches his attention and Henry looks up in time to see a disoriented soldier staggering towards them.  He opens his mouth to yell but the man is already firing.

 

                Her blood is nearly indistinguishable from the blood she is already drenched in.  He can save the boy, but he cannot save her.  Jo smiles and says she loves him as she fades away in Henry's arms.

 

 

 

 

                The war ends and he tests everything he can think of, and still each time Henry wakes up chocking up a lungful of water.  That is when he finally understands what it means to be cursed. 

 

 

 

 

 

                Lifetimes roll past and a new age of America rolls in.  Jazz, gambling, flappers, and the rule of Prohibition descends upon New York City.  He goes to work, goes home, and hides away from the razzle dazzle around him. 

 

                That is until Henry is walking home one night and hears a woman yelling.  Rushing down a side alley towards the sound, he stumbles upon an unusual scene.  A lithe woman in a shimmering knee-length dress is currently knocking the heads of the two men who were clearly trying to jump her.  She takes one down with a bottle of gin to the head, and the other with a knee to the groin and a kick to the skull.

 

                Then she turns to face Henry and his heart stops.

 

                He does not say anything.  He merely stands there watching her silently, praying that this time she really is an angel - an avenging angel mayhap - here to take him away.

 

                "Can I help you pal?"

 

                "I heard an altercation, but you seem to have it in hand."  Henry says lightly, wondering why he is being tortured.  "Are you alright?"

 

                "Swell."  Jo mutters, prodding one of the unconscious men with her toe.

 

 

                Her father is a bootlegger for the new burgeoning American Mafia, running gin and whiskey in through Canada.  Therefore Jo knows every club and speakeasy in Manhattan, and slips into all of them to talk shop for her father.  It is dangerous but she excels at it.

 

 

                Henry tries to stay away, thinking maybe it will save her this time.  Except this time she is the one who tracks him down at work.  She arrives at the hospital with a smile and Henry knows he has already lost this fight.

 

                He fell in love with her in 1813 and he is still in love with her in 1925.

 

 

                This time he buys her a diamond and eventually Prohibition ends, along with Henry's constant fear Jo's 'job' will get her killed.  He believes this time is different, this time they got it right.

 

 

                Until the day Jo starts coughing.  The moment he sees the blood on her handkerchief he knows, no doctor in history has seen more cases of tuberculosis than he has.  And he knows how all the other cases ended.

 

                Jo says she wants to see London before it happens.

 

 

 

 

 

                Henry smashes every dish in his house the day they find a cure.  He goes to work and war; he takes in an orphaned boy and watches him grow.  The world changes faster than ever before, to the point where he can hardly recognize it as the same one the bench existed in.

 

 

 

                Work does not change much, though he prefers the dead to the living now.  The subway derailed this morning killing him and the man on the table in front of him.  Only, of course, Henry is still breathing. 

 

                His assistant Lucas prattles on about something mundane while he contemplates his jealousy of a dead man.

 

                "Hello, Detective Jo Martinez."  Says an achingly familiar voice making Henry look up at the beautiful woman flashing a badge at him.

 

                Henry wonders if she killed him he would really die.

 

                "Indeed?"


End file.
